Three months after the United States and Israel launched a large-scale military campaign against Iran, the outcome has defied nearly all early expectations: the Islamic Republic has demonstrated far greater strategic resilience than Western military analysts predicted, and has now seized the upper hand in the conflict’s political and diplomatic landscape. This unexpected reversal of fortune, outlined by two leading war studies scholars from King’s College London, offers a stark lesson in the dynamics of asymmetric conflict between vastly mismatched military powers.
When the joint US-Israeli military operation launched in late February 2026, almost all outside observers forecast a swift collapse of the Tehran government. The conflict was lopsided from the start: Iran faced two nuclear-armed adversaries with the world’s most sophisticated military technology, and the scale of the invasion surpassed any military pressure Iran had endured in nearly a century.
For weeks, US and Israeli air and missile forces carried out relentless bombardment across Iran. Precision airstrikes and targeted assassinations eliminated top political and military leadership, including long-time supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s conventional air and naval forces were all but destroyed, hundreds of missile launchers and air defense systems were reduced to rubble, and the country’s internal security infrastructure suffered catastrophic damage. Thousands of tons of munitions were dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities, missile production plants, and drone manufacturing sites. While Iran quickly moved to install new leadership and mobilize its remaining military assets for a counterattack, the regime faced an undeniable existential threat in the opening weeks of the war. At that time, the idea that Iran could avoid full surrender, retain its political sovereignty, and even gain negotiating leverage against the world’s most powerful military alliance seemed impossible. Yet that is exactly what has transpired.
Jerusalem-based Middle East analyst Daniel Sobelman explains that for a weaker military power to avoid defeat in an asymmetric conflict against a far stronger adversary, it must shift the “balance of vulnerability” in its favor. That requires two core steps: preserving critical retaliatory military capabilities, and systematically exploiting the structural vulnerabilities of the opposing side. This strategic logic has long been central to Iranian military planning: Iranian officials have repeatedly emphasized that shifting the balance of vulnerability is the foundation of asymmetric deterrence and wartime strategy.
While Tehran’s pre-war deterrence posture failed to prevent the US-Israeli invasion, Iranian commanders successfully rewrote that balance over three months of sustained fighting. By inflicting unacceptable costs on the attacking coalition and exploiting unforeseen vulnerabilities, Iran not only survived the onslaught but forced the US and Israel to the negotiating table for a ceasefire.
By April, it became clear that the US and Israel could not force Iran to surrender – a goal US President Donald Trump had publicly framed as forcing Iran to “cry uncle”. The coalition failed to achieve its core objective of regime change, and it never succeeded in destroying Iran’s entire stockpile of missiles and attack drones.
Iran absorbed the devastating initial blows, but retained enough retaliatory capacity to launch consistent missile and drone strikes against Israeli population centers and US military bases across the Persian Gulf. It also targeted critical energy infrastructure in US-aligned Arab Gulf states, undermining Washington’s stated core goal of protecting its regional allies and throwing the Gulf’s reputation as a stable hub for energy production into chaos. These strikes sent a clear message to regional states: aligning with the US in this conflict creates major security risks, not protection.
Most impactfully, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, cutting off one of the world’s most critical arteries for global oil, natural gas, and fertilizer trade. The closure triggered immediate cascading disruptions to global energy and food supplies, spreading the cost of the conflict far beyond the Middle East. Iran also forced the US, Israel, and Gulf allies to expend massive stockpiles of precision munitions – a slow-to-replenish resource that created a new critical vulnerability for the coalition to pressure.
To escalate pressure on the coalition, Iran has issued further threats to raise the economic and human cost of the conflict: it has warned it will expand attacks on energy and infrastructure targets across Israel and the Gulf, and could target critical undersea internet cables running through the Strait of Hormuz. It has also threatened to mobilize its Houthi allies in Yemen to disrupt shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea, another critical global trade chokepoint.
It is true that the US and Israel achieved many of their stated short-term military goals: they severely degraded Iran’s nuclear program, conventional military capabilities, and domestic defense industries. But Iran successfully blocked the coalition from achieving its overarching strategic goals, and inflicted massive strategic, diplomatic, military, political, and economic costs on the US, Israel, their Gulf allies, and the global economy.
Tehran still remains at a major conventional military disadvantage, and remains vulnerable to future US and Israeli airstrikes. But as things stand today, it holds a clear upper hand at the political and strategic level. Iran has forced the Trump administration to seek an exit from the conflict, retains the ability to reclose the Strait of Hormuz at will, and can still strike critical targets across the region at any time.
Iran has also moved to revamp its Axis of Resistance network, which includes Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemeni Houthis, as a core pillar of its deterrence and wartime strategy. Tehran recently announced the creation of a new “security belt” for the alliance, and unveiled a new doctrine for a “unified resistance front” that mandates a coordinated retaliatory response from all members to any attack on any single part of the network.
Looking ahead, Tehran is expected to leverage its current perceived strategic advantage to strengthen its position both on the battlefield and in negotiations with Washington. Its goal is not just to survive the conflict, but to emerge with a stronger long-term strategic position that allows it to rebuild and expand its key retaliatory capabilities, particularly missiles and drones, while continuing to exploit the vulnerabilities of its adversaries.
